Homage to Cesare Cassina

Homage to Cesare Cassina

“I remember, and make the best of what I learned from my father Cesare to introduce furniture that expresses ideas that are far removed from fashion trend, the bearers of a discreet identity that can be loved forever…” Adele Cassina.

Born in Meda (Milan), Italy, on 10th February 1909, Cesare Cassina became a partner in the family firm. He was then 18 and was already a trained furniture upholsterer, having completed his apprenticeship. From the 1930s the company known as Figli di Amedeo Cassina took its first steps in the manufacturing of “chairs, armchairs and low tables”, introducing upholstered furniture for the first time. The years following the 2ndWW were by no means easy but it was then, during the post-war reconstruction period, that conditions were right for a change that would lead to the design and production of modern furniture on an industrial scale.

Cesare Cassina was a pioneer, if not the pioneer of Italian furniture design. He worked with architects like Nino Zoncada, Gustavo Pulitzer, and Giò Ponti. Cesare Cassina and Giò Ponti began designing special pieces: the first was chair 646, forerunner to what became a hallmark, “Superleggera”. In the 1950s architects such as Carlo De Carli, Ico Parisi and Gianfranco Frattini were working with Cesare Cassina, and were later joined by Vico Magistretti, Afra and Tobia Scarpa and Mario Bellini. Cesare Cassina’s meeting with Vico Magistretti marks a pinnacle in Italian design at its best, fullest, evident in the very simplicity of everyday objects.

In the 1960s Cesare Cassina got to know Dino Gavina and sergio Gandini and together created Flos. With Piero Busnelli Cesare Cassina created C&B. Another Cesare Cassina’s creation was Marcatrè, leader in the office furniture whose best-known lines carry the signature of Achille Castiglioni and Mario Bellini.

The foundation of ‘Centro Cesare Cassina’, the research centre, goes back to the 70s. Adele Cassina says: “We were living a magical, unrepeatable moment in the friendly, fruitful atmosphere of the ‘initiated’ who loved what they were doing. It was here that the ideas of Gaetano Pesce had their origins and took shape, and bestsellers like Magistretti’s Maralunga.”

CIRIACO OFFEDDU
Engineer, CEO of several companies, more than twenty years of experience as a leader of a consulting group specialized in direct management in a broad range of business disciplines and industries, expert in internationalization processes.

Newly Graduated from the City University of Hong Kong with a Master in Creative Writing.